


God Help Me, Part 2

by ErinGayle



Series: God Help Me [2]
Category: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Genre: Alcohol, Child Abuse, Children discover pornography, F/M, Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:48:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinGayle/pseuds/ErinGayle
Summary: Captain K grows up in Imperial Berlin during WW1
Series: God Help Me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819291
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This part has been marked explicit due to a teenaged sexual experience. The explicit section in Chapter 4 is denoted by a tear line of asterisks at the beginning and ending as well as a note for sensitive readers that they may want to skip ahead.

#  The Days of Empire

#  1914

##  April

Franz-Karl Leopold von Corten had a long and fancy name. At ten, spelling out the whole thing took time and ink. He began abbreviating his name to Karl von C with a squiggle after it. His grandmother, Irena Countess von Corten[1] had raised a delicate eyebrow the first time she saw it. Instead of berating him for abandoning the family name, she looked down her dainty nose through a pair of slender glasses and said, “I see the sequence of tenses rule in your Latin class has been left to die on the side of the road.” Karl’s mother was frequently preoccupied with the failure of the nannies to contain his younger brothers, the household staff, or her own social life. He was his grandmother’s favorite grandchild, and he adored her as well. 

As the oldest son of the oldest son in a noble and military family, his relatives expected that Karl would be enrolled in a cadet school like his two older male cousins, not kept at home to attend a _gymnasium **[2]**_. However, _Oberst_[3] Graf Franz-Jozef von Corten railed to his objecting brothers and brothers-in-law that his sons were not going to be shipped off to some frigid, brutal, buggery infested, anti-Catholic school in the wilds of Prussia. He’d suffered it, they’d suffered it, and if he had his way, they’d all be abolished. Instead, Jozef chose a radical co-educational gymnasium run by Benedictine brothers and Carmelite sisters. At least one of Jozef’s sisters had hissed at him about associating with bourgeoisie and Communists and that their father was rolling in his grave. Jozef countered that their father died prematurely due to his own stubbornness, saddling him with an unruly pack of eight ungrateful younger siblings at the age of twenty-three. Countess Irena had smacked the dinner table with her hand and declared the gymnasium “utterly modern and appropriate.” And, that ended that family row. 

Karl was walking his bike to the school gate intent on taking advantage of the spring afternoon and riding as far afield in the Grunewald[4] as he could go. His father never said not to, and as long as his father was at home and not out at some _kaserne **[5]**_ , Karl didn’t listen to his mother. Karl stopped short when Rosie von Bischoffen stepped imperiously in front of him. She had a fancy name as well: Adelheid Brynhild Walburga von Bischoffen. She had been named after a grandmother, a Valkyrie, and a saint. But, the name ill-suited her, and her German nanny had taken to calling her Rosie, for her strawberry blonde hair. Her parents still called her Adelheid.

Karl tried to go around her, but Rosie stayed in front of the front wheel. “What?” Karl finally asked. He could feel his ears burning as he heard the sniggers of his friends behind him. Yesterday she had punched Georg Schmidt for calling her a Chinese witch, and he ended up on his butt under the linden trees in the courtyard. It was the most recent in a long line of scraps Rosie had gotten into with her classmates. Karl was slightly afraid of her but sharing a desk with her hadn’t been so bad. She was quiet and neat and sometimes showed him silly cartoons she was drawing instead of doing lessons. That morning though, Rosie had bested him in a spelling contest. They had battled through several rounds at the end before she won beaming her sweet smirk at him, and his friends had not let him forget it the rest of the day. 

Rosie’s blue eyes looked down a slender nose. “I like your bicycle. I want to ride it.”

Karl shoved the bike at Rosie. “There! Ride it!”

Rosie caught the bike and shoved it back at Karl. “With you!” She certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone she didn’t know how to ride a bicycle.

Karl titled his head back as though he was staring up into Heaven to plead with God.

“Come on, Karl. I’ll let you take me to Mueller’s Ice Cream Parlor.”

The sniggers were now laughter. His first year at _gymnasium_ , and he was already laughed at by the boys for being bullied by girl. Karl mounted his bike. “Get on,” he said grudgingly.

Rosie gingerly sat herself on the cross bar and propped her feet on the handlebars. She held her battered attaché case in front of her as Karl peddled away to the local ice cream parlor. As he came to a stop in front of the ice cream parlor, Karl said, “I hope you have some money.”

“Of course, I don’t. Boys pay.”

Sighing, Karl tried to figure out why he was treating this strange girl to ice cream. He felt in his pocket. He really did have other plans for the marks in there. After discovering they both preferred strawberry ice cream and sharing a dish, Karl and Rosie rode to her house. It was a huge, imposing house but quiet and guarded by two German sailors. The sailors saluted as Grafine Adelheid was pedaled past the gate. Karl pedaled down the drive, and it was as if they had been enveloped in a green muffler. The grounds were well kept with lawns and widely spaced trees, but no flower gardens. The house itself was one of the original lodges near the Grunewald. Karl stopped his bike at the double green doors. There was both a naval jack and an admiral’s pennant flying beneath the Imperial flag on the mast in the circle of the drive. 

“Your father’s an admiral?” he asked as Rosie hopped off his bike.

Rosie nodded. “The Eastern Squadron[6] years ago. You want to see the China cabinet?”

“Why would I want to see your dishes?”

“No, Karl. It’s stuff from China.”

Karl shrugged and leaned his bike against the railing on the steps to the front door. Rosie knew she wasn’t supposed to use the front door. Her parents had nothing but rules and a demand for silence. However, Rosie had a guest, and guests always used the front door. She turned the highly polished brass knob and led Karl into the paneled foyer. The only sound that could be heard was the ticking of the clock. Rosie took Karl by the hand and led him through the dim corridor to a room at the front corner of the house. Karl caught glimpses of a parlor, a long dining room, and a ball room. 

“This is the China Cabinet.” Rosie turned up the electric chandelier, and Karl was in a foreign land. The rosewood furniture gleamed in front of gold silk wallpaper painted with fantastical scenes of pastoral Asia. Blue and green dragons flew along the tops of the walls. The rug wasn’t any old Persian Rug. It was pink. He stepped close to a cabinet that held five gold buddhas, each the same size but slightly different. Jade dragons and lions cavorted along another shelf. Delicate ceramics with intricate designs filled an entire cabinet. Silk flags from defeated Boxers hung from the coffered ceiling. Karl gasped at the frightening armor in the corner.

“That’s the Samurai. He’s from Japan.”

“Where did all this come from?”

“My father was the legation naval commander in China before and during the Boxer Rebellion. I was born there. We just came back in the fall.” Rosie pointed to a sorcerer’s mask. “That’s my favorite thing here. And that other mask came all the way from Tibet in the Himalayas.”

As Karl studied the fantastic things in the cabinets, he asked, “Where did you go to school in China?”

“I didn’t. I had tutors and a governess. And, three maids, a cook, a calligraphy teacher, and the gardener grew a special corner for me. And, a British major was my riding instructor. And, my dancing instructor was a Russian ballerina.”

Karl didn’t say anything, although that explained Rosie’s sometimes bizarre behavior. She’d been raised like an Imperial Chinese princess. Rosie ordered everyone around, even the teachers. Learning classroom decorum, even to raise her hand, had been a torture for the rest of the students. He often wondered what she had in the attaché case she dragged around with her and which sat on the bench between them during school. 

“Adelheid!”

Karl looked around, wondering who that could be. He saw a tall thin man with a severe face, thin moustache, and admiral’s uniform. Glancing over at Rosie, he also saw the defiant glint in her eye. When the admiral’s gaze landed on Karl, he had no idea what to do. He snapped to attention and saluted as he’d seen his father, the Colonel, do. The admiral raised his eyebrow, and his mouth almost smiled. 

“What are you doing in here?”

“I’m showing my friend, Karl, the China Cabinet.”

“Karl?”

Rosie stood as tall as she could at ten. “Admiral Graf von Bischoffen, my friend, Graf Franz-Karl von Corten. Karl, my father, Admiral Graf Johannes Wilhelm von Bischoffen.”

The Admiral looked Karl up and down. “Von Corten? Which von Corten?”

“My father is Oberst Franz-Jozef von Corten. Graf von Corten.” He hastily added. Rosie’s father was unnerving. He had a stark face and a piercing set of blue eyes from his Swedish and Baltic ancestors. If Karl had to draw a Viking captain or Norse god, he would choose the Admiral for his model.

“Ah, Irena’s oldest.”

Karl nodded. “Yes, sir.” His father was indeed his Oma Irena’s oldest child. 

The Admiral looked at Rosie. In the six months they had been back from China, this was the first classmate of hers she had ever mentioned let alone invited to the house. “Carry on.” He turned and left. Rosie followed him to the door and peeked around it to see where he was going. Her father turned into his private study, which was decorated with models of ships.

“Is that really your father?” Karl was amazed that someone could have a father as old as his grandmother.

“Of course.” Rosie turned back to Karl. “You want to see my doll house?”

Karl grimaced. A room full of Chinese objects was fascinating. “It’s a doll house. We have two from my aunts.”

Rosie smiled. “Not like this one.” She grabbed his hand, and he had no choice but to run along after her. And run she did down the silent stone floored corridor to the back stairs. Their footsteps echoed like giants’. The back stairs led to the second and third floor. Rosie’s room was on the second overlooking the lake. It was a girl’s room with dolls and books. Her playroom was a magical wonder though. Karl saw nearly every toy he’d ever seen in a toy store. And, in the center on a table was a Chinese palace being assaulted by toy soldiers with canons and defended by wind-up, tin circus animals. Karl and Rosie played with the palace far into the afternoon and only stopped when Karl noticed the sun going down over the lake.

“I have to go home,” Karl said suddenly.

Rosie took him by the hand and led him down the front stairs. “I’m not allowed to use the front stairs. Adults only.” She rolled her eyes at the stupid rule. She heaved the front door open and followed Karl outside. 

“Bye, Rosie.” Karl said as he picked up his bike. “I like your doll house.”

Rosie smiled. “Since you bought me ice cream, that means you’re my boyfriend now. You have to give me a ride to school in the morning and bring me home.”

Karl stared skeptically for a moment, but if Rosie liked him, he could come back to play with her toys. “Ok.”

##  May

Irena von Corten was sitting in the conservatory, reading a book of poetry given to her by her late husband and enjoying her collection of exotic hothouse flowers when the sound of a child squealing snapped her last nerve that day. She had to use a walking stick now, but she could still open the glass door into garden. If Sofia didn’t make sure the nannies controlled those boys, she would. 

“Let go!” Siggy screamed as Karl twisted his brother’s arm behind his back and had him in a chokehold. 

Irena came upon the scene of three children. Karl was still in his school uniform of a grey-blue cadet tunic with red piping, matching breeches, and knee high boots. Siggy wore a play suit as he had yet to be enrolled in school being only six. A girl in the feminine naval version of Karl’s uniform stood by. She wore a mid-calf length skirt and black stockings with her black shoes. Her strawberry blonde hair was held back in a black bow, and she looked on approvingly as Karl tortured his younger brother.

“What is this nonsense!” Irena demanded.

“Siggy called Rosie a Mongol-Chink because she was born in China.”

Irena looked over Rosie, ignoring Siggy’s squealing. So, this was Johannes von Bischoffen’s youngest child. The rumors about her mother were still rampant eleven years later. Irena half-wondered if Katerine would be the subject of new rumors. “Well it’s obvious the girl’s as European as he is. Siggy, stop being a little brute. Karlchen, let him go.”

Karl let his brother go by shoving him into the lawn. “Karl!” Irena snapped. She turned her attention to Rosie. “You must be Adelheid.” Siggy tried to get his grandmother’s attention, but she shooed him toward his nanny, who had lost track of him and just found him.

“Yes, Grafine von Corten.” Rosie could project a polite, sweet innocence that belied her fiery temper.

“Well, perhaps you two would like to join me for a cup of tea?”

Karl rolled his eyes. He brought Rosie home so they could catch tadpoles and baby frogs to draw for class. Tea with his grandmother was an impediment to getting their classwork finished.

“Thank you, Grafine von Corten, however Karl and I are supposed to draw tadpoles and frogs for class.” Rosie smiled politely.

Irena’s eyebrow arched a bit. “Are you? Well, then I suppose you need to get about your business.” Neither child had a pencil or sketch book. Irena wondered what else had happened with Siggy. “I’ll let Karlchen’s mother know to have his nanny keep Siggy out of the way.”

“Thank you, Oma Irena.” Karl kissed his grandmother on the cheek and ran off to the lake edge with Rosie. On the bank, the children took off their shoes and stockings, and Rosie took off her skirt as well so it wouldn’t get mud on the hem. They stalked the edges of the lawn, a spring chill still in the water. When they caught some tadpoles, Karl dropped them into a half filled jar of lake water Rosie was carrying. Eventually, they took the jar to spot where they had left their school bags. As they drew, Karl glanced over at Rosie. “Please don’t tell everyone about _Karlchen_.”

Rosie nodded. “Why does she call you that?”

“My grandfather’s name was Karl.”

Rosie smiled. “I think plain Karl is just fine.”

Karl blushed at Rosie’s smile. 

##  June

Jozef von Corten stared at his oldest son. The von Bischoffen girl had quickly supplanted any of Karl’s cousins or either brother as his favorite playmate. “No one is going to let their ten year old daughter ride double on a bike with another ten year old in this!” Jozef emphatically pointed to the pouring rain. “Her parents have probably already taken her to school and arguing with you is making me late! Now get in the damned motor car! You’re making Hans stand there getting soaking wet.”

Karl clenched his jaw. He could be furious with his father, but he couldn’t show it. He finally got in the backseat followed by his father. The driver closed the door. Jozef pushed his cap back and slid his eyes over to Karl. “Hans, drive us by Admiral von Bischoffen’s.”

“Yes, sir.”

Karl relaxed some as the car departed and went to the right out of the drive rather than left, directly to school.

“No one is going to let their ten year old son ride his bike to school with another child on the handlebars in this, Adelheid.” Admiral von Bischoffen stood on the front steps of the house with Rosie, two sailors held umbrellas over their heads. “Let me take you to school. He’s probably already there.” The Admiral looked at his pocket watch. That they couldn’t start the meetings without him was small consolation. He could pick Rosie up and take her kicking and screaming to the motor car, but he’d just have to send for a clean uniform. It was better to wait her out.

Rosie smiled when a cream colored car turned onto the drive. She watched it come closer and finally stop in front of them. Karl waved from the backseat. The two sailors descended the steps with the von Bischoffens. The man holding an umbrella over Rosie also opened the back door of the car. Rosie hopped in and sat herself between Karl and his father. 

Jozef was unclear on saluting while wearing a cap but in a covered car. He gave a cursory salute to the Admiral as he looked upward. “Admiral, sir.”

The Admiral returned the salute. He looked down at his daughter and saw that she and Karl were already holding hands. “Colonel von Corten. Give my regards to your mother.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Carry on.” The Admiral stepped back and jogged up his steps. A sailor opened the front door, and Johannes von Bischoffen entered his house to warm up with a cup of coffee before getting in his own car and being driven to the Imperial Admiralty.

##  October

Admiral von Bischoffen’s study was another place that was forbidden to Rosie. With the war in full swing, her father was in Wilhelmshaven with the fleet command, and her mother spent even more time with her card playing friends, leaving the house full of rules and empty of people. Karl and Rosie had the run of the house without even a governess to keep an eye on them. Her governess had declined to return to Germany, and the von Bischoffens never hired another one since Rosie was going to be enrolled in school. The housekeeper tried, but Grafine von Bischoffen threw tantrums when small things were out of place, not impeccably clean, or meals not served exactly when she required.

Karl was looking at the photographs on a dustless, well-polished table. “Rosie, who are these people with your father?” A woman and several teens stood next to the Admiral, when he was only a commander, in a tropical garden. “Are they your cousins?”

Rosie didn’t look up from the atlas she was flipping through. She was looking for the plate with the North Sea in it. “They’re my father’s other family.”

Karl turned to look over his shoulder. “Other family?”

“They’re all dead now.” Rosie found the plate she wanted to look at. She used her spread fingers to measure the distance from Berlin to Wilhelmshaven. “How long does it take a letter to travel?”

Karl shrugged as he left the photographs. “I don’t know. My father hasn’t written me. How did they die?”

Rosie wanted a bicycle for Christmas. Her mother had already said no. It was too dangerous. “Her father was the vice governor in Cameroon, and they went to see the colony. But, they died from cholera or something like that. My father was at sea.”

Grimacing, Karl sat down on the sofa next to Rosie. She didn’t smell like she should. They had shared a desk for a year, and Rosie always smelled like lavender. “You used different soap.”

Rosie smiled to herself. “I snuck a bar of my mother’s soap into my bath. It’s jasmine. Will you teach me to ride your bicycle?”

“Ok. Come on.”

The two sailors who stood guard at the entrance to the von Bischoffen house heard screaming and the sound of something crashing. They both looked behind them to see Karl untangling Rosie from the bicycle and the one shrub along the drive. Looking at each other, they had an unspoken conversation as to whether they needed to interfere or just be ready to call for an ambulance. That the young grafine was laughing convinced them to just wait her out, like every other adult in her life. 

It was an item of gossip among the sailors who were assigned guard duty how uncared for Rosie was. The average sailor came from an average working class or poor family, and their mothers would never have let one of their sisters galivant around the way Rosie did with the little Graf von Corten. She didn’t even have a governess to try to escape the clutches of. Progressive rich people, and officers to boot. What could a man do but be ready to clean up the mess?

“Brake! Brake! USE THE BRAKES!” Karl ran down the driveway to help Rosie up again. This time she stuck out her foot to catch herself at least. Before he got there though, she was up and back on the bicycle. 

“I can do it, Karl!” Rosie yelled back as she focused on the open gate. 

Hearing the girl on the bicycle, one guard turned around ready to catch her should she not stop at the gate. She slid to a stop carving a deep gash in the gravel. 

“I can do this, Henrik,” Rosie breathlessly assured the sailor. Rosie checked the duty roster every day for the names of the sailors who would be at the gate.

Henrik was surprised she knew his name. “Yes, ma’am. I think you can.”

“I’m going all the way back to the mast this time, without falling.”

Henrik nodded. “Remember to ease into the stop gently, like you pull back on the reins.”

“Ok, Henrik. Bye.” Rosie turned around on the bicycle and hopped up on the pedals. It took her a moment to gain traction on the gravel, but she got it and took off slowly for the courtyard. Karl ran alongside, protectively. Rosie made it all the way to the mast, then bumped into the stairs but not too badly. She stayed on the bicycle, turned around, and completed a loop of the driveway. 

“Well, Hans, there is no stopping that girl now,” Henrik shook his head at the laughing and whooping children taking turns racing down the driveway.

Hans nodded. “If they get her a bicycle of her own, she’ll be halfway to Hoppegarten[7] by the time anyone around here realizes she’s missing.”

[1] Countess Irene von Corten, née von Klenze, was the granddaughter of Leopold von Klenze, a noted architect who designed The New Hermitage in St. Petersburg and as the court architect of Ludwig I of Bavaria designed a number of buildings in Munich and Bavaria to include the Ruhmeshalle. She married into the nobility and was considered one of the most beautiful women in Berlin in her day. Karl’s grandmother is patterned on her.

[2] School level in Germany equivalent to grades 5-13 in the US and focused on preparation for university. In the mid 1910’s curriculum would have been German language and literature, Latin, history, modern foreign language such as French or English, mathematics through algebra, and the physical sciences as well as physical education and music. 

[3] Colonel

[4] The Grunewald is the large forest park on Berlin’s western boundary. The Havel flows through it. The eastern bank is Berlin and the western bank is Potsdam. The location of both children’s homes is in today’s district (Ortsteil) of Grunewald, a sub-unit of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The area was built up in the 1880’s by wealthy Berliners. The Ku’damm ends in Grunewald district.

[5] Barracks in the sense of the entirety of a military post not just the sleeping dormitories.

[6] The Imperial German Navy maintained a cruiser squadron in East Asia from 1894 to 1914. It was an after-thought of the Imperial Navy, lacked a port until 1899, and was never a match for any of the British or French naval forces in the region. But, for Rosie’s father, it wasn’t the North Sea. German naval ambitions were a significant contributory cause to WW1.

[7] Hoppegarten Racecourse is outside of Berlin on its eastern side. It’s about 20 kilometers from Central Berlin (Mitte) and 30 from Grunewald.


	2. Chapter 2

#  1915

##  May

Karl’s eyes glazed over as the sounds and gentle breezes of spring wafted in through the open classroom window. Whatever point of Latin grammar being taught was lost on him as he thought more about the smell of grass and watching a spider spin a web and then how the dew drops would hang from a web in the morning sun. The breeze passed by Rosie, sitting across the aisle from him and next to the window, the reddish blonde strands of her hair were barely hoisted upward along with the tails of her black crepe bow. Karl saw the way Rosie’s hair glowed as the sunlight passed through it, and the tangled veil it made over her cheek as the sudden puff died away.

“Von Corten!”

Karl heard his name and didn’t respond even when the brown wool robe of his Latin teacher blocked all else from view. Brother Mattias slapped Karl on the back of his head to refocus his attention. Rubbing his head, Karl looked over at Rosie again and saw her angry, crossed eyebrows. He adjusted his dazed slouch to better see the clock on the wall. The hands crawled toward dismissal, when he would finally be free of the misery of school in springtime. The courtyard bell finally rang, but the students didn’t move. The bell was for the teachers, not the students. Brother Mattias stood at the chalkboard and assigned a set of exercises for the night, before dismissing the class. 

Released on a beautiful spring day, Karl and Rosie ran down the stairs to the schoolyard. They walked their bicycles to the school gate together and rode off toward the Grunewald. At eleven, they weren’t supposed to be riding anywhere but home after school. However, Sofia von Corten was even more distracted by her husband’s family; his brothers, their wives, and children moved in and out of the house as assignments and leaves changed. The aunts always seemed to have a permanent kaffeeklatsch going. And, Katerine von Bischoffen played more cards and drank more tea. With her father usually in Wilhelmshaven, it was only Rosie and her mother left in the huge house. Rosie rarely saw her mother except at dinner. Karl, who found the ever changing cast at his parents’ table irritating, felt sorry for Rosie that she was all alone so often. 

The place Rosie and Karl favored lay under an oak tree on the banks of the Havel. Saplings and long grass struggled under the oak’s wide crown while the water slowly slipped past. It was just off a path, but only the presence of a bicycle leaned on the tree would betray anyone’s presence once they sat down. Rosie and Karl played there acting out Karl’s adventurous fantasies that were often hijacked by Rosie’s impulsive imperiousness. Karl would be frustrated by Rosie, but never mad with her. He just had to work harder to wrest their adventure back from her. On that afternoon, Karl was racing across the desert carrying important dispatches while Rosie chased him intent on not just stealing the dispatches and his horse but keeping him prisoner in her desert fortress. He let her shove him against the big oak.

“And now you are tied up in the depths of my dungeon,” Rosie declared.

Karl smiled as he put his hands behind his back. “Try all you like. I won’t tell you where I hid the dispatch case.”

Rosie held a small stick she had been using as a sword to Karl’s throat. “Then you will suffer.”

“Go ahead. I’m a loyal servant of the King. Do your best to torture me.”

Rosie cocked her head a bit. Karl watched her bite her lips, and he smirked at her. Her hands firmly gripped his shoulders then she kissed him perfectly on the lips. Her smooth lips against his was at the first instant a shock, and he tried to pull his head back only to hit it on the oak tree. She only followed his motion. He parted his lips to take a breath, but Rosie’s lips slipped between his. She stepped back from him.

“What was that?” Karl asked.

“You said to torture you,” she answered in a giggle. What could be more torturous to an eleven year old boy than a girl forcibly kissing him?

Karl looked down at her. Her hands were still on his shoulders, holding him against the tree. He kissed her this time. Her lips felt as smooth, but he pressed his lips more forcefully against hers. He didn’t know why, but he also put his hands around her waist, pulling her entire body close to him. “That wasn’t torture,” he whispered beneath the sounds of the water and the wind in the tree.


	3. Chapter 3

#  1916

##  May

Karl sighed deeply and tragically as he and Rosie lay reading on a blanket under the biggest tree in the von Corten’s garden. He tossed aside the Jack London book he was reading. “I have to take dancing lessons this summer.” 

Using Karl’s thigh as a pillow, Rosie read Effi Briest[1], which she’d snuck away from her mother’s room. She didn’t put her book down. “You can’t dance?” Karl could shoot, ride, fence, swim, row, and box. 

“Why is it important anyway?”

“It’s how you get a wife. Or at least that’s what my mother said.”

“I’m twelve. I don’t need a wife.”

“Yet.”

Karl touched the silken reddish-blond hair that streamed across his legs, fanning into a delta as it fell from his other thigh onto the wool plaid. Rosie always wore her hair pulled back in a bow that matched whatever dress she was wearing. Today was a pale blue cotton voile with a spread white collar and black tie. She even had on white stockings. Rosie sat up and loomed over him. The sun set her hair a blaze. She half smiled as she stared down at him. Karl often thought of a sphinx when Rosie looked at him like that. He pushed himself up on his elbows. As he hoped, Rosie bent down and kissed him. 

“I’m telling!” screamed a younger child from somewhere on the lawn. 

Rosie finished her kiss and sat back. “I don’t like Heinrich.”

“He’s horrible,” Karl agreed. Karl got up from the blanket and ran down his seven year old brother, grabbing him by the back of his sweater before he could get into the house. He shoved his little brother against a low garden wall. “You say anything, and I will tie you to your bed, so you wet it tonight.”

Heinrich cut his eyes toward Rosie and stuck his tongue out at her.

Rosie sidled up next to Karl. “He’s a fat little piggy. You ought to put him on a spit and roast him for dinner.” She slid her hand around Karl’s arm and gently tugged at him. 

Karl shoved his brother into the grass for good measure and walked away with Rosie. They went into the house, and Rosie asked if they could listen to the victrola Karl looked into the music parlor. As the room was empty, he assumed they could. Rosie chose a record. Karl didn’t look at the title before he placed it on the victrola. “What is this?” he asked as the music began. It sounded like hunting horns. 

“It’s Strauss’s _Tales from the Vienna Woods_ , and we are going to waltz.”

“I can’t waltz,” Karl said flatly. “I’ve never been to one dancing lesson.”

Rosie rolled her eyes. “Everyone can waltz. You put your hand there, and I put my hand here, and I’ll lead, even though I’m going backwards. Normally men lead, but they go forward. Just watch my feet.”

Irena was having tea and cake with her oldest son, Franz-Jozef, home from the front for leave, and his wife, Sofia. “Who is playing waltzes?” Irena had been a devotee of the waltz in her youth and even considered marrying an Austrian in order to live in Vienna solely for the waltzing. Mostly the music played on the gramophone these days was indecent ragtime. She set down her teacup and used her cane to stand up. Jozef and Sofia followed Irena down the hall. She wasn’t especially old, but she was so thin and frail these days Jozef was afraid the slightest injury might be her last. 

In the music parlor, Rosie was slowly waltzing Karl around the room. Neither saw that they had garnered an audience. Karl was focused on not tripping or stepping on Rosie’s feet, while Rosie made sure they didn’t dance into any furniture. The Countess stopped at the archway into the music room and smiled. “Don’t they look just lovely?” 

Sofia grimaced. Adelheid was beautiful. She was also willful, and Karl followed her around like a puppy, satiating her every whim. She could lead him down the road to Hell, and he’d gladly go. “I didn’t know Karl could waltz.”

“He can’t,” Irena snapped. Sophia was smart, but she didn’t have an ounce of finishing to her. “Adelheid is leading from the reverse. She’s pulling him along so he can get his feet in the correct position.” Irena looked up at Jozef. “Keep an eye on that girl. She will be the toast of Berlin when she’s twenty. You two and Karl better play your cards right if he intends to be more than a guest at her wedding.”

##  November

Karl and Rosie’s fathers were away at the war, and their mothers were fractious being left alone for the third winter. Karl and Rosie had been best friends and sweethearts for two and half years. In that time, they had gone from climbing trees together to sitting under them kissing. Their mothers wanted the two children to be better supervised, but both loathed to enforce anything which added more burden to their days. Rosie’s mother particularly enjoyed her afternoons playing cards and going to teas. She had left the raising of Rosie to servants in China and did the same in Berlin. It never occurred to her she should have hired a governess since Rosie attended school. Whereas Karl’s mother had to run a household under the critical eye of an ever revolving cast of in-laws. Half the time Sofia von Corten was intervening in some family spat between adults, and Karl quietly entertaining Rosie usually was of no concern. Her husband’s youngest brother, Stefan, a cavalry captain, essentially lived in the family home when he wasn’t at the Eastern front. In November of that year, Stefan was at home convalescing from injuries received in Lithuania not only from rifle fire but being attacked by wolves after his horse was shot from under him. 

Karl noticed his uncle often received small packages and envelopes that had not been through the post. Stefan hastily took them to his room, and no one ever mentioned them. Karl saw an envelope waiting for his uncle on a credenza in the study. Slipping the envelope into his school uniform blouse, he quietly disappeared to his room and opened it. He had anticipated finding a love letter to his uncle from a woman the family would find unsuitable, perhaps a married woman or even a Protestant. 

He did not anticipate five photos of men and women in various states of undress and bawdy behavior. What he saw was certainly more informative and salacious than the anatomy plates in the old medical texts Rosie’s Uncle Moritz had left behind at her house before he died on the French front. Karl looked intently at the photos comparing and contrasting them while trying to calm the tension he felt in his body. Every priest, every doctor, every adult had drilled into him that looking at the naked body or touching a naked body, even one’s own, was an unhealthy sin unless you were married and wanted to have children. He crossed his legs hoping the feelings and the swelling would go away. It only grew worse and more urgent. He bit his lip staying quiet, as he certainly didn’t feel he should when the desperation finally resolved in a pleasant if frightening manner. Karl looked back at the photos. His Uncle Stefan had to have more.

The glorious joy of a boy discovering a secret stash of pornography cannot be underestimated. Karl found boxes of well-organized smutty photos and post cards hidden in the bottom of his uncle’s wardrobe. Being an upstanding older brother, he didn’t share this with his brothers, Siggy and Heinrich. He did begin to filch though. There were so many of so many different types that Karl imagined his uncle would never miss a few. Stefan’s taste ran from the mundane photo of a woman with bare breasts to the fetishistic, which Karl didn’t even understand. Stefan also had a taste for men and boys. Karl dropped those cards as if they burned his fingers. What curiosity he had about males was painful and blinding. 

For Karl, it was not enough to have this illicit trove of stolen pornography. He wanted to share it. Taking a few postcards to school to show his friends never crossed his mind. Instead, one rainy afternoon when few people were in the house and his grandmother was away in Bavaria, Karl and Rosie snuck upstairs to his room. He slid open a wall panel that was installed when the house was electrified and pulled out a cigar box. The floor was cold, and Karl and Rosie sat on his bed. Rosie took off her black ankle shoes then dutifully studied the photos and cards with Karl. 

Being well acquainted with the photos, Karl had also become practiced at the art of sating himself. Rosie’s presence had a strange dampening effect on what was usually a moment of joyous ardor. Karl felt nervous and also afraid that Rosie would not like the photos. He sat slightly behind Rosie and rested his chin on her shoulder as she looked at each card. He heard how her breathing changed. He could feel how warm her cheek was and saw a flush to her pale skin. 

“Why?” Rosie whispered. “Would someone want to be showing off their bare bottom and take a photo of it?” The photos unsettled her, shame and curiosity vied within. She could feel her heart beating too fast and hard. She also felt tremors in her fingers.

“I don’t know,” Karl answered quietly, but those pictures of bare bodies were strangely enticing.

They were so intent on the photos they didn’t hear Karl’s mother in the hallway berating the housekeeper, Frau Schumer, for the new maid’s lack of attention to detail. Karl’s bedroom door suddenly opened, and Sofia gasped at the sight of her son and his little girlfriend sitting on his bed together looking at something. Karl jumped back and Rosie jumped up, scattering the postcards. The housekeeper’s eyes grew large, but she’d found Stefan’s postcards years ago. Sofia picked up one of the cards, unfortunately an explicit one instead of just a coy nude. 

Karl had never seen his mother turn so white and then so red. Her green eyes darkened, and he couldn’t move away from the hand coming for him. She grabbed him by the collar and dragged him from the bed. She caught Rosie by the bicep, and together the children were hauled down the curving stairs. Sofia was screaming Stefan’s name repeatedly as she pulled the two children into the parlor. She slammed them on to a sofa at opposite ends. The housekeeper was running after her with Rosie’s shoes and the postcards. 

Stefan finally appeared, not because he heard his name but because he had come home. He stood confused in the entrance hall.

Sofia came hurtling toward him. “You!” she snarled. “Frau Schumer, send Hans to pick up Grafine von Bischoffen.”

“What about me?” Stefan, a lean, rangy man with a sharp face and temper, asked as he took off his coat. Another maid had appeared to take it. All the staff wanted to know what the screaming concerned and were readily, though discretely, at hand. The new maid was watching Rosie and Karl, unsure of what might happen but knowing that keeping the two of them on opposite ends of the sofa was for the best. 

Sofia snatched the photos from Frau Schumer and smacked Stefan in the chest with them. “Your smut! Karl has it and was showing it to Adelheid von Bischoffen.”

Stefan pushed Sofia out of the way and barreled into the parlor. He grabbed Karl by the tunic and slammed him back into the couch. Karl watched the world go in and out of focus as his head bounced on the walnut edge of the antique Biedermeier couch. His uncle’s hand was a blur coming for him, and he tasted blood in his mouth after the ferocious burning on the both sides of his face registered. His right eye was suddenly blurry and teary as well. “You god damned little brat! What have you been doing in my room!”

Karl stared at his uncle, unable to answer. Stefan hit him again, this time cutting Karl’s lip against his teeth. Through the tears in his aching eye, Karl saw movement on the other end of the couch. Rosie was standing. He couldn’t focus his eye or move it well, but he saw her shape coming behind Stefan. Suddenly Stefan gasped and crumpled into the floor, dragging Karl forward until he was released.

“Adelheid!” Sofia screeched. “Adelheid! You can’t kick a man there!” She bent over and checked on Stefan. One of the butlers was there to help Stefan up. 

Rosie whirled around. “He was hurting Karl!”

“Karl deserves to be punished!” Sofia continued. “He was showing you awful things that he stole from his uncle’s room!”

Stefan was leaning heavily on an ornate chair. “And he will be. And so will that little bitch if I have anything to say about it.”

Rosie stood in front of Karl, her arms crossed, glaring at Stefan. Frau Schumer pulled on Rosie’s arms and got her to sit down. She whispered to the butler who went to the kitchen for ice out of the ice box. He returned with a chunk wrapped in a tea towel and pressed it against Karl’s swelling eye. Karl held the soothingly cool towel to his eye. He apprehensively waited for what was coming next. Sofia kept looking at the clock and wondering where Hans could be with Rosie’s mother. Katerine finally arrived and was shown into the study. Stefan joined the ladies. There was loud talking and a bit of thunderous yelling from Stefan. Finally, the butler and Frau Schumer came for Rosie and Karl. 

Stefan was standing in front of the big desk with a thin piece of cane. Rosie felt all her muscles tense. Karl stopped moving, and the butler forcibly walked him over to the desk. Katerine grabbed her daughter by the bicep and pushed her to face the wall at the double pocket doors. Karl was pushed down over the desk.

“Go on. Drop them,” Stefan ordered. “The drawers, too.”

Karl fumbled with the buttons on his breeches. He got them unbuttoned and let them drop to his ankles. He slowly pushed down his modern underwear and wished for once he had on a wool union suit. He’d never been whipped like this, though he’d heard it happened to boys at school. On occasion he’d been strapped by his father, but Jozef rarely had the spirit to hit his sons more than three or four times.

“Keep your hands on the desk, or I might break a finger.”

Karl held onto the edge. The first hit of the cane stung like hot sugar. Karl bit his tongue it was so forceful. The second hit was worse, then the third. By the fourth, Karl gasped in pain. Before long, every time he was hit, he cried out. He had no idea how many times his uncle whipped him. He was holding on to the desk for dear life. 

Every time Rosie heard the cane hit Karl she flinched. “This is your fault,” her mother whispered to her. “And, don’t think there isn’t something similar waiting for you at home.”

When Stefan was finished with Karl, he looked over at Katerine. “Do you want to whip the little bitch or should I?”

Katerine didn’t appreciate her daughter being called a bitch. “I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue about you, Stefan, even if you are pervert.” Katerine felt Rosie turn her head but wasn’t concerned. Rosie could see Karl barely able to stand. His bottom and thighs were scarlet and streaked with bleeding purple stripes. 

Karl managed to stand up and pull up his underwear and pants. The fabric touching his caned skin was excruciating. He wiped the tears from his face with his cuffs and tried to turn around with a valiant look on his face. He could see Rosie across the room looking over her shoulder, half turned. He couldn’t bear the thought that his uncle might beat her the way he’d just been beaten, but Karl also couldn’t move. He felt his knees shaking as he tried to stay standing and ignore the fiery pain that was working its way up his back and around to his stomach. 

No one expected Rosie to suddenly move. She jerked away from her mother and ran across the study to Stefan. He leered at her fierce, determined manner. He didn’t think a twelve year old girl could rip anything out of his hand that fast or would dare strike him across his face. “ _Gottverdammt **[2]**_!” he screamed at the pain from being struck diagonally from temple to jaw with the cane. He slapped his hand on his face, pulling it away to make sure he wasn’t bleeding. The other adults were shocked into silence. 

Frau Schumer had had enough of this. She grabbed Rosie’s hand and pulled the cane from it. Looking at Karl, she saw how pale he was. “Helmut, carry Karl up to his bedroom. He’s about to fall into the floor.”

Stefan grabbed Karl around the arm. “He can walk, Frau Schumer.” And, Stefan marched a limp Karl out of the study. Rosie watched Karl barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Karl was bent over by the time Stefan dragged him upstairs, his hands as useful to getting upstairs as his feet. Stefan threw Karl into his bedroom floor. Karl lay there watching his uncle pick up the rest of the scattered photos.

“You stay the hell out of my room,” Stefan threatened. He slammed Karl’s bedroom door on his way out. 

Karl dragged himself across the carpet and under his bed. He checked to see if the other cigar box was still jammed between the wall and the springs. Laughing he pushed himself back out into the open. There was a third box of photos in the attic and a fourth hidden in the basement. He tried to get up, but his legs hurt too much. He lay there in the floor until Helmut and Frau Schumer came to take care of him. 

[1]Effi Briest (Fontane, 1895) is the Madame Bovary of German literature and still considered an influential and important book in the development of modern German literature. A twelve year old reading it would have been a bit scandalous.

[2] God damn.


	4. Chapter 4

#  1917

##  March

Sighing as he sat down on the wooden bench next to Rosie, kKrl asked, “Why are you here this time?”

Rosie shook her head in disbelief. “Maria Littman alleges I purposely tripped her during calisthenics.”

“Did you?”

Rosie raised her eyebrow. “At this point its academic. She broke a tooth.”

Karl leaned his head on the wainscoted walls. “Rosie, you attract trouble.”

Rosie winked. “When I’m not starting or finishing it.”

The office door across the hall opened and a wimpled nun stepped out. “Adelheid,” she said wearily. “And, Franz-Karl, aren’t you supposed to be in Brother Francis’ Western Civilization class right now?”

Karl grimaced and stood up. “I’ll see you in Latin.” He glanced over his shoulder at Rosie as he left. 

Sister Agatha didn’t even bother to bring Rosie into her office. She sat down next to the worst behaved girl in the _quarta **[1]**_ class. “Adelheid, what are we going to do with you?”

“I didn’t trip her. I accidentally overtook her running. I was trying to beat Mathilde Wegner.”

“And, so quite a few of your classmates said. There’s still the issue of Willie Mühlfeld.”

“He called Karl a _schwule_[2],” Rosie said softly. “And, just because Karl said he had better things to do than see who could hit who hardest.” Rosie had intervened in the brewing spat between Karl and his nemesis from the _untertertia **[3]** _class by punching Willie in the spleen, wholly unasked. Karl had almost yelled at her in front of everyone.

“You should let Karl fight his own battles. He’s big enough and strong enough, even if he doesn’t care to. He’s going to have to learn to accept a challenge.”

“So, he can purposely get hurt?” Rosie asked incredulously. 

“To prove his manliness and bravery. It’s stupid, but that’s how men are.”

Rosie could not believe what she was hearing. “So, the Brothers fight with each other to prove how manly they are?”

Sister Agatha sighed. “Well, not Christian brothers, but military officers.”

Rosie shook her head. “Karl’s not going to be in the army. He’s going to go on adventures and write newspaper stories and books, like Conrad and London.”

Romantic girls were the bane of the Girls’ Headmistress’s life. “That’s very romantic, if not realistic.”

“Siggy and Heinrich might be officers, but Karl will never be one. I’m positive.”

Sister Agatha had given up on influencing or trying to punish Rosie. Her mother had birched her so severely before Christmas, she missed a month of school with no perceivable cowing of Rosie’s temper or personality. The girl either would or would not behave. “I believe you should be in biology,” Agatha said with a sigh.

“Yes, Sister.”

“And, Rosie, it’s good of you to stand up for Karl, but wait until he needs it. He can handle the Willie Mühlfeld’s of life by himself.”

Rosie and Karl skipped down the damp steps of the school hand in hand. Karl was one of the few boys in the _quarta_ with a girlfriend. Most of the other boys in his class stood around in knots, wildly fantasizing about how one got a girlfriend. Most of the girls stood around wondering whether boys from the upper classes found them attractive. 

Willie Mühlfeld had a dislike for Karl that seemed to have sprung from nothing less than irrational envy. Karl was a hereditary noble. Willie’s family had come to Berlin and worked their way from bakers, to bakery owners, to flower mill owners with the largest flour mill in Brandenburg, yet Willie knew that Karl would never have to compete for the plums of life. Willie’s secret, burning ambition was to be a cavalry officer. His father’s ambition for him was a university degree and taking over the business someday. It chaffed at Willie to think that Karl would be handed a commission because his father and all his ancestors for time immemorial had been officers and probably knights or noble mercenaries. It was even worse that Karl was well-liked by everyone. There was a languid ease with which Karl faced the world. Nothing was too hard.

As for Willie, he was on par with Rosie on her worst days. Willie demanded that Karl respect him, and Karl was mystified when Willie was mean to him. Being called a homosexual slur had stunned Karl. He only vaguely knew the meaning of the word. Rosie jumping into the fight had embarrassed him though. Karl pushed her away from Willie before she hit him a second time. Karl had been more worried that Rosie would be expelled than for Willie, but he’d also been warned by his boxing trainer not to hit the soft parts of a man’s stomach.

Seeing Karl and Rosie walking past, Willie called out loudly, “There goes the _tunte **[4]**_ and his _schwuchtel hexe **[5]**._”

Karl couldn’t hold on to Rosie’s hand. This time she’d been insulted. Rosie walked toward Willie, focused on his infuriating smirk. She’d already put him down once last year. She swung her satchel behind her, gracefully twirled twice, and landed it square on his jaw. Willie’s feet left the cobbles, and he landed on the ground. Rosie was about to kick him between the legs when Karl finally caught her and pulled her away with both arms around her. He could feel her pulling against him. 

As Willie sat up, he tried to laugh despite the blood coming out of his mouth. “Still letting your girlfriend fight your battles, von Corten?”

Karl felt his face harden with fury. His teeth were grinding, and his brows scrunching together. “You want to fight? I have to let go of her. So, just fuck off, or you’ll have to deal with both of us.” He heard the gathering crowd gasp at the use of the word _fuck._

Brother Rupert was standing with Brother Linus, the track and field mentor, both smoking and supposedly overseeing dismissal. “Do you think she’d like to throw discus?” Brother Linus asked as he exhaled a plume of smoke. 

“I think she’s broken two teeth and been in three fights in one day. I’d say a school record.”

Brother Linus shook his head. “The girl was an accident, and he deserved it.”

Brother Rupert sighed and went to deal with Willie, while Brother Linus turned Karl and Rosie toward the bicycles. “You two, go home. And, Franz-Karl, you have a better vocabulary than to use such a disgraceful word.”

“But, it got my point across precisely with brevity and emphasis.”

Brother Linus rolled his eyes. “I doubt Sister Karolina would be pleased at you quoting her to excuse your cursing. Go home.”

As they got on their bicycles to ride home, Karl finally asked, “Rosie, what do you have in that case?”

Rosie opened her old attaché case and showed him a large, thick, battered book. “War and Peace.”

“You’ve been dragging around War and Peace for three years?”

Rosie blue eyes looked at him quite innocently. “It’s a very long book.”

##  May

“Karl, you have to go to school.”

Karl watered another of his grandmother’s plants. She fell ill so quickly she never had a chance to tell anyone how to keep all her orchids, ferns, lilies, and other exotic plants alive. Karl was just guessing . 

“Karl.” Jozef still had a limp and walking without a cane was painful and slow. He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “It’s time to go to school.”

“I don’t want to. Someone has to figure out what to do for all the flowers.”

Jozef was just as happy to put them all on the trash heap. His mother’s conservatory sucked heat out of the house, let the cold in during the winter, and was unbearably hot in the summer. He’d like to tear the whole thing down after the war. “Karl,” he said pulling the watering can from Karl’s hands. “It’s time to go. There’s no need to take care of this ridiculous mess anymore. Now, get out of here and get ready for school.”

Karl was shoved toward the door. He didn’t say anything like he wanted to. He’d been reading his grandmother the newspaper when she passed away. Karl had been hastily shoved aside when he went to his parents in the music parlor to report that Irena might have died. No one thought to ask if Karl had been unnerved by hearing the rattling last breath. Jozef especially didn’t have patience with anyone bothered by death. He’d lived surrounded by its most gruesome forms for three years.

As Karl buttoned his tunic, he thought about the best way to get back at his father. He didn’t want revenge, just acknowledgement that his grief mattered. Silently, Karl went down the back stairs to the kitchen and then into the cellar. The lights of the wine cellar barely lit the bottles, and Karl carefully read each label. He finally found the bottle he was looking for. Tucking the bottle under his tunic, he slipped back upstairs and out the door to the old carriage house. With the bottle secure in his school bag, he pedaled off.

At midday, Karl tugged on Rosie’s cuff. “Come with me,” he whispered.

Rosie looked away from the girls she was talking to, vaguely smiled, and turned back to her friends. After three years, she had developed the social skills to actually get along with some of the other students. Karl, however, was first in her life. 

Waiting by the bicycles, Karl kicked at the courtyard’s dirt and pebbles. He saw Rosie walk down the steps. Her hair glowed with the spring sun. They weren’t in all the same classes as in the first year of _gymnasium_ , and Karl missed spending the whole day sitting next to her. Rosie put her attaché case in her basket. “Where are we going?”

Karl winked and got on his bicycle. “Just come with me,” he said with a smile. 

Rosie followed Karl out the school gate and toward the Grunewald. “What about lunch?”

“Don’t worry.” Karl called over his shoulder. Once in the forest, they rode abreast to their favorite place. As they propped their bikes against the tree, Rosie wondered how they would get back in time for afternoon classes. She didn’t ask. Karl pulled the wine bottle from his school bag. He grabbed her hand and ran with her to the water’s edge. 

“What are we doing, Karl?” Rosie asked as he sat down and pulled off his boots.

“Skipping school.”

Rosie was shocked that Karl had thought of that. He was a conscientious, adored student. She was the bad child. “You! Skip school?”

Karl looked up at her and smiled mischievously. Once his boots and stockings were off, he stuck his feet in the water and started unbuttoning his tunic. Rosie unbuttoned her skirt, letting it drop to the grass. She sat down next to him and took off her shoes and stockings as well. Soon they were sitting in the early May sun, their feet in the Havel, wearing not much other than their underwear. Rosie had on a white cotton camisole and her petticoat. She looked over at Karl in his one piece. 

“What do you do when you skip school?” Rosie asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done it before.” Karl set the wine bottle in his lap. “This is my father’s favorite bottle of wine.”

Rosie turned the label toward her. “Chateau Margaux[6] Grand Vin 1900.”

Karl laughed. “He’s waiting to open it. It’s for the victory celebration.”

“Then why do you have it?”

Karl took out his pen knife. He’d seen his father and the butler open wine and figured it couldn’t be that hard. After cutting the band, he stabbed the blade into the cork. “He told me to just let all my grandmother’s flowers die. So, I’m going to drink his precious bottle of wine.”

“Karl, that’s really—” Rosie heard the wine cork pop out. There was nothing to do but drink the wine. Karl offered her the bottle first, and she took a small sip. “That’s pretty good,” she said smiling and taking a longer drink before handing the bottle back.

“How do you know?” Karl took a brief sip then a longer drink as well. “It is.”

“It’s better than what we had at dinner last night.”

Karl’s eyes widened in surprise. “Your mother lets you drink wine at dinner?”

Rosie shrugged. Her mother was the most inappropriate, hypocritical parent she could imagine. “She said she doesn’t want to waste the bottle.” Rosie took the bottle back and had a longer drink. “So, what else do we do when we skip school?”

“I don’t know. Whatever we want.” Karl glanced over at her and saw the way the sun burned in her red hair laying on her shoulder. He’d seen her shoulder plenty all the times they’d gone skinny dipping, but it never looked so warm and enticing. Slowly, he bent down and kissed her skin just where there was a little divot at the end of her collar bone. 

Rosie leaned back on her hands. Her feet were cold, and she pulled them out of the water. She’d never felt his skin on hers there. He had put his chin on her shoulder plenty when they were reading or looking at something together. She watched his fingers touch the lace strap over her shoulder and smoothly slide it onto her arm. The next time he kissed her, it was a little lower on her shoulder, almost her chest. “I don’t want to get a sunburn. Let’s get in the shade,” she said to him.

#### Note: Sensitive readers may want to skip ahead.

#### ******************************************************************************

Picking up her clothes, Rosie retreated under the big oak. She spread out her skirt and middie blouse so she didn’t have to sit on the grass. Karl sat on his tunic next to her. They kept drinking the wine, more slowly as the alcohol began to have an effect. Rosie laid back resting her head on a root, while Karl laid his head on her shoulder. He put his arm over her waist and felt her skin where the camisole and the petticoat met. He felt her hand on his back. Slowly, nearly minutely, Karl slid a finger under Rosie’s camisole. Rosie looked down her nose at her stomach and watched as Karl’s hand disappeared under the cotton and lace. His hand inched up her stomach while she felt his breathing become fluttery and tight. She tried to keep her own breath as still as possible. When his fingertips touched the lower edge of her breast, Rosie inhaled deeply as the strangest feeling surged through her. Karl was amazed at how smooth all of Rosie’s skin was. His fingers were barely in contact with her breast, but he felt an electric quiver in his body. 

Rosie silently lifted her hand and unbuttoned her camisole. Karl pushed aside the soft fabric and looked over the horizon of Rosie’s chest. She had only just started developing a mature figure. Karl’s fingertip touched the tip of her nipple and felt it and the aureole tighten.

“Why does it do that?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know. It does it in the cold, too.” Rosie sipped at the wine and held the bottle up for Karl. 

As he took a drink, some dribbled down his chin to the top of his short cotton union suit. Karl wiped away a few drips and kissed Rosie’s lips. He’d heard some of the older boys in school talk about tongue kissing and even looked through the remnants of Stefan’s post cards to see if any of those portrayed it. It looked strange, but this time when he kissed Rosie, he darted out his tongue quickly, barely grazing her inner lip.

“What was that?” Rosie asked him. Half the bottle was gone, and she was feeling sleepy and giggly. 

Karl sheepishly smiled. “It’s how French people kiss.”

Rosie giggled. “Maybe that’s why the Kaiser has a war against them. He needs a kiss.”

Karl laughed too, and kissed her again, this time she opened her mouth some and her tongue briefly met his. They giggled together as they experimented, taking turns being the first tongue. Rosie turned onto her side as they continued to kiss, and Karl’s hand continued to lightly run over her breasts. 

Rosie felt something hit her thigh. “Karl, what is that?”

Karl swallowed nervously. “Um, it’s…my father called it the Little Duke.”

Rosie burst out laughing. Her Uncle Mortiz had been a general surgeon, and his medical books were in the room in the von Bischoffen house he used before he had been killed in 1916. Rosie had read or at least looked at the pictures in most of them with Karl. There was no one else to explain anything about sex to her, so she went where she knew she could find some explanation. “I’m sorry,” she said, but couldn’t help but keep giggling.

Karl hung his head but softly laughed with her. He simply kissed her as long and deeply as he could. He felt the small ridge of her pallet with his tongue then her tongue. Other than holding her as close as possible, he had no idea what else he should do. Karl finished his kiss and reached for the wine. They each took a drink and carefully set it aside. “So, what does yours look like?”

Rosie blushed. “You know I don’t have one.”

Karl’s ears turned red.

“Do you want to see it?” Rosie saw that Karl’s ears, cheeks, and neck were red.

Karl shrugged, but Rosie pressed her soles together and pulled her petticoat up to her waist. Karl peeked down at her thighs, then took a better look. “It’s very…pink.” Karl thought that it also glistened. He reached his hand toward her legs only to be sharply smacked. He yanked his hand back, embarrassed.

“That’s not what you do, Karl.” Rosie sat up and leaned against the tree. Rosie had also read parts of her uncle’s texts on gynecology. She had read that a doctor could cure a woman’s intransient headaches and anxiety via paroxysm. All he had to do was deftly massage her. She had pleasantly experimented on herself though she rarely had headaches. 

Rosie took Karl’s hand and pressed it against her. She felt him shivering almost. Karl reminded himself to breathe. “You use your longest finger,” she began to instruct him as her hand gently moved his. Karl was staring at a point somewhere between her breasts. “And very gently….” 

Her words were lost to him. He could still hear her voice, but he felt how warm her skin was, the softness of the hair there, and the hot, wet envelopment of his finger. He took a deep breath, not remembering if he had breathed in a bit and watched as Rosie pushed and pulled his hand. Soon his hand was doing exactly what she had told him. She was saying other things to him, and his finger was moving, but Karl wasn’t sure it was him moving his own hand. When he felt a strange hand close around his own member, he gasped again. He knew how to touch himself; he had no idea how that strange but warm and firm hand knew. He could see Rosie’s stomach rising and falling with her breath. It was quicker than his inconsistent gasping and fluttering. He felt the tension in him. He couldn’t stop touching Rosie and hoped whoever was touching him didn’t stop either.

Rosie leaned back and barely let her eyes open. She could see Karl’s face. His eyes were staring down at her stomach while his lips were parted. She could hear him breathing hard. She licked her dry lips. Karl was breathing faster and faster. She felt a small bit of wetness as her hand passed over the tip of his shaft. Suddenly, Karl cried out and pitched forward onto her shoulder. Rosie felt warm, slickness in her hand and tears on her shoulder. She rubbed off the slickness onto Karl’s cotton underwear and put her arm around his shoulders. 

“Don’t stop,” she told him in a faint and breathy voice. 

Karl opened his eyes and looked up at Rosie. She was half smiling as her hips rhythmically pressed upward into Karl’s hand. He began to move his hand faster and press more firmly against the bone he could feel. Finally, Rosie grabbed hard at the fabric of her blouse and Karl’s arm. Her back arched some, and she exhaled deeply. Karl kissed her contented smile. She turned her face to him and softly kissed his cheek. He let his hand relax and slip from her. His wrist ached a bit, and he wiped his fingers on her petticoat as he pulled it over her legs. Rosie reached for the wine bottle and had another long drink as did Karl. 

******************************************************************************

#### Note: Pick up reading here

They continued the newly discovered French kissing and slowly finished the wine over the afternoon, falling drunkenly asleep at some point. They woke up as the sun slowly dropped and the shadows caught a chill. Karl kissed Rosie as romantically as he could imagine. He had avoided romantic films and covered his eyes at what he couldn’t. Rosie had a better idea of romance from her mother’s novels that she wasn’t supposed to be reading. Rosie caught Karl’s cheeks in her hands and imagined herself the heroine kissing her dashing hero before a feat of daring.

They cycled home in the evening, unaware of what time it was. Karl stopped at Rosie’s house, and they kissed a last time, still on their bicycles in the middle of the street, stopping only when a car honked at them. One of the sailors on guard walked into the road and ushered Rosie to the gate while giving the car’s driver an apologetic wave. Karl continued to his house where he put his bicycle away and took the empty wine bottle in with him.

“Where have you been!” Sofia shouted at Karl as he walked into the small dining room.

Karl saw his brothers and some cousins being fed dinner. Extra people were in Berlin and at the house for his grandmother’s funeral. “In the Grunewald.”

Sofia grabbed Karl by the arm and dragged him behind her. “Jozef! He’s home! Jozef!”

Jozef half-hobbled from the study. It had been five months since his injury and walking without a cane was still difficult, though that wouldn’t stop his return to the front in a few weeks. “Where have you been! I’ve called every family I know! The von Bischoffens' housekeeper is beside herself! I was getting ready to get a search party together for you and Adelheid! Where in the hell were you until this hour!” He grabbed Karl by the tunic and shook him. Then, he smelled him. “Have you been drinking?”

Karl smirked as he held up the empty Chateau Margaux. “Rosie and me. The whole thing.” And, he purposely dropped it on the marble floor where it satisfyingly shattered. 

Jozef rarely let his emotions get the better of him. This evening he didn’t stop himself when he hit Karl as hard as possible without letting go of the boy. He dragged Karl over to the study doors. “Get in there!” he screamed as he threw Karl bodily into the room. 

Sofia couldn’t remember ever seeing Jozef so angry. “Jozef!” she tried to intercede.

Jozef picked up Karl from the floor. “Lying! Thieving! Drunk!” He tossed Karl toward the desk. Karl almost hit his head on the edge. Jozef was around the back of the desk. He kept a leather strap there for the boys. He got in one good smack across the back of Karl’s thighs.

“Why don’t you go get Uncle Stefan’s cane? It hurts more,” Karl peevishly snarled

Jozef froze mid swing. “What?”

“Uncle Stefan’s cane. It hurts more.”

Jozef stared at Karl then looked over at Sofia wringing her hands and trembling by the doors. “What is he talking about?” Jozef coldly asked.

“Mother let Uncle Stefan whip me with a cane after I showed Rosie some of the photos I found in his wardrobe.” Karl finally felt vindicated. He had wanted to tell his father about the beating for months.

Jozef dropped the strap as he approached Sofia. “You let Stefan whip my son?” Jozef knew Stefan held a vicious grudge against Karl for taking Irena’s attention from him when Karl was a baby and for Karl not having to suffer the same schooling to which Jozef had sent Stefan. “You let my perverted brute of a brother touch him!”

Sofia crossed her arms. “What was I supposed to do? You weren’t here. You’re never here!”

“No! I’m out fighting for the existence of the German state and people!”

“In a stupid, avoidable war!”

Jozef was shaking he was so angry. “Karl, get out! NOW!”

Karl grabbed the strap his father had dropped and ran for the door. He’d never known anyone but himself or his brothers to be hit with the strap, but he’d also never seen his father so angry. As he ran up to his room, he could hear his parents screaming at each other about him, Stefan, Irena’s flowers, the war, and anything else they could possibly think of. Years of anger and frustration were finally being lanced. 

Upstairs in his room, Karl hid the strap in his wardrobe and eased out yet another stash of purloined pornography. These though were few, because Karl didn’t want to hide them with the others. Kept in a thick book on naval longitudinal determination snuck out of his father’s study, they were of men or teenaged boys. Karl didn’t know why he was attracted to these pictures. Most were of two men doing no more than admiring each other. There were a few turgid phalluses, but Karl liked looking at the chests and shoulders. He was surprised the men weren’t embarrassed with each other. He’d be embarrassed to stand with other boys naked. But, as he thought about it, not his brothers or cousins, and he’d never been embarrassed getting out of the Havel or the _see_ naked with Rosie. Maybe he just didn’t see other boys naked often enough. 

A sharp knock at the door startled Karl, and he hastily threw the book hiding the pornography under the bed. He jumped up to answer the door. “Father,” he said once he opened it. He was thankful his father hadn’t just barged in like usual.

Jozef stepped into the bedroom and closed the door. It had been his bedroom once. The furniture and wallpaper were unchanged. “Karl, your mother told me about Stefan’s smut and you showing it to Adelheid.”

Karl looked down. “Yes, sir.”

Jozef went to the windows which looked out on the lawn and the lake. It was the only bit of lawn left. The rest was planted with vegetables. He took out a cigarette and lit it. “You don’t smoke, do you?”

“No, sir.”

Sighing, Jozef wasn’t sure what to say. “You know…you know how women get babies don’t you? It’s not from the stork.”

Karl remembered his mother being pregnant with Siggy and Heinrich. He was kept away from her in case he had measles, but Karl only remembered that he wasn’t allowed to see his mother for months. “I know it’s like with horses and dogs.”

Jozef silently groaned. He’d been tasked with explaining sex to Stefan and Otto as well. Otto had simply laughed and told his oldest brother he was well aware. Stefan had seemed traumatized. “Karl, you can’t…at least not with girls like Adelheid.”

Karl wasn’t quite sure what he could and could not do and which girls were like Rosie and which weren’t because very few girls were like Rosie at all. “OK?” he agreed.

Jozef knew he was botching this. “What I mean is that girls like Adelheid and the girls at your school are expected to be virgins when they get married. Boys aren’t, but girls are. I know you like her, but you have to be careful with her. You might want to touch her in a lot of ways you’ve unfortunately seen. But, you shouldn’t.”

“What if she wants me to touch her or to touch me?” Karl absently asked. 

Stefan smoked harder. Telling sixteen year old soldiers to just wear a condom was so much easier. They were treated like men. He couldn’t treat his thirteen year old son the same way, especially when the boy already had a girlfriend he was utterly comfortable with and seemingly enthralled by. “Karl,” Jozef said in exasperation. He rubbed his forehead and knew he’d have a migraine before the night was over. 

“So, I shouldn’t put my—”

“Exactly,” Jozef said suddenly. “Exactly. Whatever you do, do not ever, until you’re married, do that with Adelheid, or another respectable girl.” He smoked his cigarette down to the butt and pulled out another. He opened the window enough to throw out the first butt and lit a second cigarette. “Your Uncle Stefan…. What did I know? I was twenty-five, and he was ten. I barely knew him. Sending him to the same miserable school I was sent to was the worst thing I could have done. He was beaten by the staff and the older boys, probably worse things, too. It ruined him. He became cruel and brutal.

“I would have strapped you, don’t get the idea I wouldn’t have. But, because you were showing those photos to Adelheid or because you had stolen them from your uncle. Looking at those kinds of pictures is pretty normal for boys, even if our mothers get the vapors when they find out. Your mother told me how badly Stefan beat you. He shouldn’t have, and I will have it out with him the next time I see him.”

Karl watched his father anxiously smoking and trying to talk to him about something important. For the first time ever, Karl thought his father was just an imperfect man trying his best and not the all-powerful officer he’d seen before. His father wasn’t even dressed in a uniform, just a pair of riding breeches and a sweater. 

“You didn’t want to go away to cadet school, did you?” Jozef asked cautiously.

“No! Why would I want to go away?”

Jozef looked over at Karl. “You’ll be behind your classmates when you go to the military academy.”

“I don’t want to go to the military academy. I don’t want to be an army officer.”

Jozef wasn’t surprised. He and Leopold von Imrech, Karl’s godfather, had decided the boy would be a reluctant officer, but they didn’t have the imagination to foresee any other path for his life. “You want to be in the navy?”

“NO. I don’t want to be in the military at all. You and all my uncles are miserable. You all hate your lives. You leave your families at home all the time.” Karl didn’t know he felt this way. The words just started coming out. “No one’s happy.”

“What are you going to do?” Jozef asked incredulously. A life outside the military was unthinkable. “Maybe you want to be a diplomat? You don’t want to run Adlernhof, do you? A gentleman farmer?”

Karl couldn’t say what he wanted to do as an adult or not. He’d never thought of it, but his father already had a plan for him. “I don’t know.”

Jozef felt the migraine beginning to squeeze his brain. “Karl, you’re a graf. You can’t marry a grafine if you don’t have an appropriate profession, and you can’t marry just any girl and remain a graf. She has to be from an appropriate family, too.[7]”

Karl felt his heart beginning to race. “Who decides?”

“The law.”

“There are laws saying who I can and can’t marry?”

Jozef nodded. “Sadly, yes. Unless you immigrate.”

“Well, what if I don’t want to marry anyone?”

Jozef shrugged. “God, I have a migraine now. Just watch yourself with girls, hmm?” He noticed he’d smoked the second cigarette down to the butt, too, and tossed it out the window. “And, don’t steal anymore of my wine. My Chateau Margaux drunk by two thirteen year olds. That’s bordering on blasphemy, Karl.”

Karl stared at his father and watched him leave the room. He felt like he’d just had the most absurd conversation of his life so far. 

##  August

Karl climbed into the old hay loft of the carriage house, despite being dressed in his best suit and with his best shoes. No one ever looked up there anymore. It was where things went to be forgotten. Hiding from the entire family seemed like the most expedient way to end the torture of the day. He had sunk down on the steps when his godfather, _Generaleutnant **[8]** _Graf von Imrech, had delivered the regrettable news that his father had died during an artillery bombardment at Ypres. Karl never thought his father wouldn’t come home from the war. Now, whenever anyone caught him crying, he was snapped at to “act like a man.” He didn’t want to act like a man. He was thirteen. He wanted to act like himself. 

Today had been the funeral Mass. Catholics were rare among the nobility and the officer corps, especially given the recent Imperial _kulturkampf_[9] against the Roman church. The families were well intermarried. Karl thought half the Catholic officers in the Empire were in his family’s house. It had been strange looking around at Mass and seeing so many people not taking communion. He’d been forced to go to confession early in the morning and shoved up the aisle to the rail. 

He heard the voices of men in the parking court. His Uncle Stefan and Uncle Henrik were clearly out there with a few other men he didn’t recognize. From the way they were pausing as they spoke, he assumed they were smoking. He heard another set of shoes walking in the pea-gravel. They were smaller and lighter and utterly ignored by the men. Soon, Rosie was sitting next to him. She put her arm around his shoulders, and Karl sank down into her lap. Her black gabardine dress hid his tears, for which she didn’t scold or belittle him. Rosie smoothed his hair and gently rubbed his back. It was the most comfort he’d received in the past week.

Up in the hayloft, neither of the children spoke. They felt the air go still and heard the quiet descend before an afternoon thunderstorm. A distant rumble, barely audible, changed the conversation among the men. They started to talk about artillery and bombardments, how to judge how far away guns of different size were. Just as one voice began to speak about a gruesome experience, a bolt of lightning intervened. The air sizzled with its electric sound, and somewhere close a tree was hit. 

“Where the hell is Karl?” Henrik asked as the men walked toward the house.

Karl sat up when he heard the rain on the slate roof. “Come on,” he said taking Rosie’s hand in his. They climbed down the ladder then ran into the house via the kitchen doors. The maids and cook were too busy putting food on trays and washing dishes to notice two children scurrying through to the service stairs. Karl knew they couldn’t go to his room, not after the Smutty Postcard Calamity. Instead they took the front stairs down into the foyer and just enough people saw them. From there Karl led Rosie to the conservatory. 

Rosie gasped as she entered the glass room filled with dead and dying plants. “Your Oma would be so angry if she saw what happened to all her plants.” 

“I think I accidentally killed a bunch of them,” Karl admitted. He sat down on the wicker couch and Rosie joined him. 

“I’m sorry your father died,” she said softly. 

Karl nodded. He felt the tears coming again and tried not to let them out, but he also felt Rosie’s arms wrap around him and laid his head on her shoulder. He didn’t remember them laying down on the dusty cushions or falling asleep crying. 

Admiral von Bischoffen found them asleep together and simply woke up his daughter to go home. All he saw were two tired children at the end of a long and trying day. He noticed his late brother-in-law’s gynecology texts moved around and easily imagined why. He married Katerine as a favor to her father and with only dim hopes of having another son. Rosie was as feisty as he remembered any of his boys, but she was a girl. Demanding a governess now, though, seemed moot. Sofia von Corten was packing the family off to Franconia in a few days. The Admiral felt terribly sorry for Karl. The boy might as well be facing exile to Botany Bay.

[1] Old term for the third year of _gymnasium_

[2] Contemporary polite usage with an umlaut: sultriness. Without the umlaut: slang/slur for homosexual.

[3] Old term for the fourth year of _gymnasium_

[4] Slur: homosexual with a feminine presentation. Femme, fairy, or queen.

[5] Slur: Literally schwule witch, syn. with fag hag.

[6] Chateau Margaux is one of the pre-eminent vineyards in France and has produced outstanding wines for centuries. The 1900 vintage is especially notable and retails around $18,000 a bottle today. The 2019 Margaux is listed at $500 per bottle on the futures market. Karl’s father “picked up” his bottle from a looted case while invading France.

[7] There were laws governing who the nobility could marry, generally no one beneath them socially, and what professions they could engage in. Those who transgressed were stripped of their noble titles and status. Losing noble legal status also resulted in the loss of significant legal protections and advantages unavailable to the common German people. By the beginning of WW1, grafs were marrying wealthy women of common status, but only if the family was considered worthy.

[8] US Major General (two stars)

[9] The kulturkampf occurred in the 1870s and concerned the anti-Catholic position taken by the Kingdom of Prussia against the Catholic Church, primarily as concerned education and church appointments. The Catholic Church’s influence was severely degrading as the principles of the Enlightenment spurred growing secularization in an already primarily Protestant area of Europe. Once Germany was unified, the population was 65% Protestant with most Catholics living in the South. The Church was by no means on the side of the angels in this secularization conflict. Just about every social and political reform was framed by the Church as anti-God. Anti-Catholic bias remained throughout the various German governments until after WW2, although Catholics were neither legally persecuted nor were they discriminated against as strongly as Jews. 


	5. Chapter 5

#  Explanatory Notes

Child rearing and Education in Edwardian Europe—Rosie and Karl are both growing up in wealthy, noble families. As babies and young children, they would have been taken care of by nurses and nannies, seeing their parents for only an few hours a day at most. Depending on the family, a governess would be hired when the child was around six to teach elementary reading, writing, and math. Eventual enrollment in school was not a forgone conclusion. Many girls had a governess until the age of sixteen, when she might be considered old enough to begin venturing out into society with a chaperone such as an older female relative. There might also be tutors hired for more advanced academic subjects as well as artistic endeavors, especially music and dancing. The goal though was marriage to man of equal or higher social status and with excellent economic prospects. Boys were usually sent away to school around age eight, and their nannies dismissed if there were no younger children. After boarding school, university or more likely a military academy and commission would complete their educations. Corporal punishment, whipping, caning, birching, strapping, etc., was seen as a legitimate and to some a necessary manner of disciplining children at home and at school. 

The way wealthy children were raised seems harsh and even neglectful today. Rosie is not physically neglected, but she has been emotionally abandoned. Her parents are distracted, indifferent, and barely a presence in her life. Karl has a better emotional attachment to his parents and especially his grandmother. Karl accedes to Rosie’s dominance because she accepts him and values him for who he is right then not who he is supposed to become. While Karl often leads their play, Rosie often usurps his imagined script to satisfy her own personality. Karl isn’t a competitive boy and does not interpret this as losing control but rather Rosie adding her own script to his. As for Rosie, she finally has someone who focuses on her and interacts with her as a person not a task or an inconvenience. It’s the sudden and deep emotional connection between Karl and Rosie that governs their friendship at a time when many children find their true best friend for at least their teen years if not life. 

Rosie and Karl’s fathers are rather enlightened in their attitudes toward education by choosing a coeducational gymnasium. They weren’t instituted in Prussia until 1910. Rosie’s father is in his sixties and rather consumed with the war instead of the retirement he looked forward to, while her mother is much younger and has always been uninterested and fairly neglectful toward her daughter. The idea of having Rosie out of the house eight hours a day is appealing to her mother for the simple reason that Rosie is a stranger and to her father because he realizes his daughter is under-socialized by any standard. Karl’s father, Jozef, had a miserable experience away at cadet school. His younger brothers Henrik and Otto didn’t, so Jozef thought it was just him until he saw how the school turned his brother Stefan from a fairly normal boy in a mean, cruel, brutal young man. Jozef is actually doubtful Karl would survive cadet school. He knows his son is adventurous and independent enough to run away.

Jozef also recognizes that Karl is more disposed to flights of fancy than the rough and tumble world of boys. It doesn’t bother Jozef in the least that Karl’s best friend is a scrappy little girl or that their friendship takes a romantic turn. Jozef is worried that Karl will engage in intercourse with Rosie or a girl like her from their social class. Common worries over pregnancy or disease take a back seat to worry over loss of social status for Karl. The von Cortens are Catholic Bavarians in a Protestant Prussian world. If Karl engaged with decent prostitutes as an older teen boy, Jozef would disapprove officially but not bat an eye. What he doesn’t want is some scandal that will impact Karl’s future prospects for a military commission or marriage. Rosie’s father just wants to get her to twenty, virginal, or at least never pregnant, and marriageable.

Teenaged Sexuality—In early 1900’s Germany, average onset of menstruation was fifteen, onset of viable semen production was fourteen, and the average age of marriage was twenty-five. This is obviously going to vary somewhat by social class, however, Imperial Germany had more teen sex and young adult sex going on than most of its denizens would have been ready to admit. At this time the rubber condom was available and widely distribute to European soldiers during WW1 as a disease prevention tactic. The rubber diaphragm and cervical cap were also coming into vogue for women. The use of a cervical sponge with a spermicide, often vinegar, was already in use. Abortion was also a common tactic to deal with out of wedlock pregnancy as illegitimacy was a legal status that was socially and economically burdensome to the child and mother.

Rosie and Karl are eleven the first time they kiss, which is perfectly normal. They are twelve when they first encounter pornography. Victorian and Edwardian pornography was available in heterosexual, gay male, lesbian, flogging, and domination themes among others. While Rosie and Karl are enticed by the pornography, they don’t initially understand what it is or why the people in it are doing that, like many children today. Curiosity about sex, initially assuaged by medical texts, isn’t based on the prurient or lascivious objectification of each other but natural biological urges. 

The Victorians and Edwardians were prudish in public, but their pornography, erotica, and personal letters show a much bawdier life behind closed doors. Even so, Karl and Rosie’s parents simply aren’t ready, able, or available to discuss sex with their children. When they have their first sexual experience with each other, they are thirteen and perhaps a bit precocious. However, they are proceeding on a natural course of exploring their own and each other’s bodies. Their parents, like many parents today, would react with horrified panic to discover what their children were doing. 

Karl does not yet have the ability or knowledge to recognize any feelings of his homosexuality. He’s only heard of homosexuality in the context of sin. There may have been famously out artists and such, but these weren’t household names in the von Corten home. His mother’s Victorian propriety would see to that. He does know that homosexual pornography induces just as pleasant, yet more confusing, feelings in him as heterosexual pornography. Homosexual activity had long been illegal in Germany and a sin within the Church. Paragraph 175 was passed into the German Criminal Code in 1871, as the first national law based on many older laws stretching back into the Holy Roman Empire. Karl exists within this milieu and has no safe way to begin to express what he is feeling. 


End file.
